


Big Wings

by rokhal



Series: Pirates of the Caribbean: Age of the Uzi [4]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Airplanes, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Guns, Implied Past Ship Death, POV Outsider, Wacky Family, Whisking OMC off to a world of adventure and free money
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 02:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Jack Sparrow retrieves his ship. Plane. Flying boat. Thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As Time Goes By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's still the same old story.

Kyle couldn't believe they were actually going to do it.

It was night, a quarter-moon for thief-light, all quiet on the grassy airfield and his father's ancient fighter planes; at the river, the geese on the docks huddled with their necks tucked in; trucks on the freeway rushed past steady and calm. He paced the driveway, one hand gripping a remote control. Behind the quiet house, reared the sail-like tail of a much larger bird, the retired pirate hawk _Tonga Mars._ Kyle's target.

* * *

Two weeks before, Jack Sparrow had first dropped off the highway to see Bonny and Ned's Air Museum and Antique Emporium, striding right past the fence that guarded the Sopwith Camel, the Jenny, the Corsair, and the Hellcat, to a sun-bleached Tiki bar where a drowsy figure in a splotchy button-down slumped with his back to the road, reading about medical maggots in a back issue of _Surgical Innovation_. At the crunch of boots on gravel, the shirt stood up, pushed lank brown hair off a bony white forehead, and blinked hooded blue eyes at the visitor.

"Tap a fifty, lad," Jack had demanded, delicately extending a counterfeit bill to be changed and leaning close enough to the tall young man's collarbone to cow him with his breath. Kyle, backpedaling, had hurriedly obliged, and Jack had signed the guest book under the bar with a scrawl and a curlicue and swaggered toward the riverbank, leaving his would-be docent at the admission stand.

The sleeper at the docks dwarfed the house twice over: a gorilla-browed cliff of a nose, broken at the pinnacle by a crazed bubble of canopy; smooth flanks rising sheer to a perfunctory curve over the back; wing-floats like war canoes; a tail like a second plane; all squat and blocky and awkward and up-stretched—except for those wings: long, even, albatross wings, shaped to lift that cargo freighter of a fuselage. Every spring, two busloads of high-schoolers stood shoulder-to-shoulder on those wings for the most dramatic class photo on the West Coast.

"Hullo again," Jack muttered. "Black doesn't suit you at all."

The flying boat still wore the black paint he'd left her in—night camouflage, applied for practical reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with nostalgic sentiment of any kind—with the showmanly addition of a Jolly Roger dangling under her shoreward wing. A plain polyester Jolly Roger, not his personal flag.

"Would you like to hear the history of the legendary pirate plane _Tonga Mars_?" asked Kyle from his shoulder. "Perhaps a brochure?"

Jack waved off the pamphlet. "Tell me, laddie—is this ship in working order?"

"The engines are still there," said Kyle, surprised. "Dad drained all the fluids and stripped out the hoses—better to preserve it, you know."

Jack frowned.

"Dad's always wanted to fly it," Kyle said. "But we…so far, we, uh, lack the funds." Funds, indeed—to fill her tanks would cost more than Kyle's car was worth.

"Legend'ry, eh?" asked Jack, brightening. "Whatever for?"

Kyle huffed in relief—he didn't like awkward questions from people in giant leather hats who looked like they slept in bus stations and drank vodka for breakfast—and followed the tourist down the dock into the cavernous fuselage: two decks of fiercely echoing steel rooms, tall ceilings knotted with pipes and struts, bulkheads crusted in rust and raunchy graffiti drawings. Fluorescents flickered above the light from the sparse portholes, and display cabinets stood at each wall. With little hope to fly again, _Tonga_ was a museum ship.

" _Tonga Mars_ is the one—the only—military aircraft ever captured and flown by sea robbers," he recited in his slick, tour-guide's patter. "The JRM Mars series was commissioned by the United States Navy in 1943 as a long range transport aircraft that could land at any seaport, carry massive cargo loads, and cross the Pacific on a single fueling. She stands forty-eight feet from keel to tail, one hundred twenty feet long, with a two hundred foot wingspan. Only seven planes were built—"

"Skip to the next part," said Jack, trying to examine the walls through the protective shields of Plexiglass that Bonny and Ned had installed. The interior had been hung with memorabilia: some cheesy costume bits, like a plastic chest of what appeared to be chocolate gold coins, some original equipment and personal items that had come with the plane, and some vintage Tommy guns that Jack wished had come with the plane, had they only had the ammunition. He was annoyed to see that the disco ball had survived.

"The next part?" asked Kyle.

Jack turned away from the wall. "The part where it _happens_ ," he explained, exasperated.

"Um," said Kyle, having lost his place. "While lying at anchor in Tokyo Bay, the _Tonga_ was hijacked—"

"Cut out," Jack corrected him.

"No. Hijacked."

"You ever sail a ship, lad? Trust me for the fine points."

"I've never sailed a ship," said Kyle through gritted teeth, "but I fly two planes."

Jack, though shorter, continued to stare down his nose at him.

" _This_ is a plane," said Kyle, seeing his point had been lost.

"And a ship," Jack cut in, sweeping his hands in. "Ships, our podgy friend being— _generously_ —one," he began, with a gingerly wave around the walls, "and planes, are hijacked when there is, corporeally, a sorry jack at the helm or in the cockpit—cockpit for Podgy, like a plane—sorry—" to the ship, "to whose protesting corpus the jacking may be done to. _Cut out_ is a little fleet of boats running up with guns and knives and pistols and wrenching the sleeping vessel from her homely berth—which was what was done."

Kyle sucked in a breath through his nose. "You're absolutely right," he allowed, as Jack led him up the steep stairway to the upper deck and the glassed-off, but intact, bridge.

"What'dyou expect? I'm Captain—er— _John Smith._ Continue."

"The _Tonga_ was 'cut out' of Tokyo Bay in 1953, and over the next eighteen years, was implicated in nearly one hundred pirate attacks in every major sea."

Kyle went on to describe the _Tonga_ 's more notable exploits—the oil tanker, Cairo, the Chinese destroyer, the South African secretary of state—"Skip the destroyer," Jack ordered—and closed with the bizarre circumstances of her capture: crewed solely by Marshal Islanders in banana-leaf kilts, she had landed in Guam, and she and her operators were taken into Naval custody when they attempted to purchase gasoline with rupees. The captain—

"I was wondering when you'd get to 'im."

The captain, a mysterious character who styled himself 'Jack Sparrow' after the famed eighteenth century pirate—

"Do tell."

Kyle was not an expert in eighteenth century piracy—just planes, medicine, and mammalian taxidermy.

The captain was never found, and the plane—

"Ship."

The ship lingered in a boneyard for a while, then found its way to Ned and Bonny through their begging and pleading, and with the help of several high-ranking naval friends Ned had made before he retired.

"And here it is," Kyle concluded.

"And you are _sure_ ," Jack demanded, pushing himself away from the transparent wall he'd been leaning on, "that nothing _sensitive_ is missing?"

"Not unless we had a break-in."

Jack made a last inspection, from stem to stern—nose to tail—darting sidelong, evaluative glances at Kyle. At last he pranced casually back to shore, Kyle following until they returned to the ticket stand.

"Would you like to see our other vintage aircraft? Or stop in the gift shop?" Kyle asked.

Jack halted and spun so fast Kyle nearly ran him over. "D'you have any idea," he asked, "the pounds of gold the _Tonga_ took in? Per share?"

"No one does," said Kyle defensively. "There's no exact tally of what it took. And then they had to sell it black market—you know how that goes—"

"Yes, but do you?" Jack asked, narrowing his eyes. He looked Kyle up and down one last time, before leaning in. "Two."

He turned and headed back toward the highway, trench-coat flapping. He was halfway down the driveway before Kyle charged up after him, eyes alight, sputtering, "Two? Two pounds? Two what?"

Jack spun round again, grinning like a cat. "How'd you like to see Malacca?'


	2. Cat's In The Cradle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's sure nice talking to you, Dad.

Two weeks later, the _Tonga_ was oiled, hosed, stripped of much of its plexiglass, and its chains unlocked and ready to drop. Her fuel tanks had been laboriously caulked from within—Kyle had wormed through the wing cavities, strangling on the toxic vapors, and had had to wash his coveralls six times to get rid of the smell. He'd poured his savings into the project; his mutual fund wasn't going anywhere, anyway. Tonight he was going to get out of this town, out of his parents' doomed roadside house _cum_ sideshow. In a year or two, he'd steal himself a nest egg to take him comfortably, tax-free, through medical school. Tonight, all or nothing.

He coughed, nervous, and stomped in the brisk California night air.

Headlights peeled off the freeway, arcing around to fall into a two-lane accessory road. He tensed. A tanker truck fishtailed onto the driveway and swerved directly at Kyle, who dodged sideways into the grass.

John Smith drove like he walked. It was terrifying.

Lights flicked on in Kyle's parents' house, as the stolen truck barreled past and whipped around when it got to the dock, skidding and tilting on the dry grass, until it finally settled with a squeal of shocks. Kyle slowly straightened, once it appeared the truck would not explode. Smitty, leaning out the window, began to back the truck down the dock toward the _Tonga Mars_ , scattering the geese that slept there, with only an inch or so of boards separating the tires from the river. As the semi-truck neared the fuselage, it seemed to shrink smaller than a dune buggy, tucked under the wing. A Mars drank eleven thousand gallons of high-octane gasoline at a time. Kyle guessed the truck held less than half that.

Even after nights and nights of hasty conference and secret repairs, Kyle still didn't know what to make of the man who called himself Captain John Smith. When he'd first seen him, he'd thought him a crazy bum by his wavering gait, his hair, his odor, and all the…well… _crap_ that he carried on his belt. After talking to the man, Kyle had decided Smith was still in possession of most of his faculties—perhaps a hard-core British hippie. He was indeed a competent aircraft mechanic, and obviously familiar with the ship, which supported Smith's claim to have helped manage the _Tonga_ in its heyday.

They'd secretly refitted the _Tonga_ , bringing hydraulic and engine hosing in by the river and working between midnight and dawn. Together, Kyle supposed, a streetwise old-timer with connections and a clever young pilot could profitably revive the _Tonga_ 's criminal career—though they might run into problems unless Smitty stopped calling himself "Captain." At his age, Smith must have been a simple grease-monkey at best.

Staring down the driveway at his house and the shadowy hulk behind it, Kyle's throat tightened. The lights in the house had come on too soon.

He called the cell phone he'd given Smith.

"Hurry!" Kyle hissed.

"You think so?" replied the pirate. _Click._

The tank truck reached the end of the dock and stopped. The running lights dimmed, and Kyle could just make out a trench-coated form clambering out the window and across the top of the tank to get to the spigot, the dock being swamped by the trailer. Meanwhile, a screen door rattled, and he heard the unmistakable shck-klerack of a twelve-gauge chambering a buckshot shell.

His father was standing at the door, the front door, away from the dock. He would circle the house, shotgun at hand, catch John Smith at gunpoint, and call the police. They would canvas the area and find Kyle. Kyle, having drained his savings for most of the parts to refit the _Tonga_ , would be implicated in Smith's truck-jacking, prosecuted, convicted, and declined by every medical school in the US.

Kyle cleared his throat softly, then barked twice, like a dog.

He saw Ned turn, the shotgun silhouetted by the light of the living room. Smith would have reached the _Tonga_ door by now—Kyle prayed he wouldn't trip over his own toes or something—and ought to be hauling out the plane's intake hose. A clank echoed from the dock, and Ned's shadow shifted again, and set out around the corner.

Kyle snarled furiously, and called out a coyote's yip-yip-yip-howl. Then, desperate, more snarling, more yipping, a yelp, and a deep bass threatening bark. Another yip for good measure. His father halted, inches from the corner of the house, and began to advance on him into the dark. Kyle ducked behind the grass on the verge of the driveway, and wished belatedly that he knew how to throw his voice.

His father had always wanted to _shoot_ a coyote…


	3. Monster Mash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mine eyes beheld an eerie sight.

Captain Sparrow pressed his ear to the plane's hull, listening to the gush of gasoline echo from the belly tank. All was as it should be: no hissing, no rattling, no spatter of oil on water. He nodded in approval, then braced his hands against it and tried to get back up.

He was stretched sideways across the four-foot gap from dock to plane, his boots planted horizontally against the dock edge and his shoulders squeezed against the cold, sheer hull. His coat dangled one edge in the river. His neck was cramping.

Pushing on the plane wasn't quite working.

He tried wriggling his head and shoulders to inch up the hull, and in the process curved his back and nearly broke the pressure that was holding him up. He cursed, straightened, winced, and slowly levered himself up with his hands, his legs starting to shake and his cramped lungs protesting. Finally he stood at an angle, boots on the dock edge, leaning with outstretched arms on the plane. He bent in, gave a shove, and staggered back, slipping on goose-poop and catching himself on one hand—in more goose-poop. The dock was slick with it.

Shaking his fingers clean, he squinted far off into the dark at a man's back. The man had a long gun of some sort, and hadn't fired it yet. That would be the father. The boy must be keeping him busy. The _Tonga_ 's intake hose could mind itself.

Jack Sparrow slunk up the riverbank to the house, dug his favorite pick and tension wrench out of his pocket to scrub open the back door's dead-bolt, and in a few seconds he was into the kitchen, blinking in the bright lights. Delicately, he swung the door barely shut, and twirled around, his coat whipping against a low coat-rack nearby.

Ned and Bonny's kitchen was bright with moss-green wallpaper with tiny white flowers in neat lines. A khaki-carpet stairway divided it from the oak-paneled living room, from which a swag lamp glowed. The countertops were tiled in green and pink, and Bonny's white cupboards bore rows upon rows of stenciled tulips and lilies. Poofy pink-and-white striped curtain flounces framed the night-black windows. In one corner of the ceiling, a painted mobile made from bowed and curled coat-hanger wire dangled an assortment of frolicking bunny figurines, in ceramic, resin, and Swarovski crystal.

Jack cut the crystal rabbit free and stuffed it in his pocket, then, from another pocket, pulled out a nylon laundry bag. The tallest cupboard over the stove held a bottle of Wild Turkey and some cheap cooking sherry. He wrapped the whiskey in a dishtowel and dropped it in the bag, then turned to the rack of kitchen knives, flicking the blades under his ear and dropping to the linoleum the ones that didn't ring with good temper.

Having exhausted the riches of Bonny's kitchen, he listened briefly at the foot of the stairs, then swished past to survey the living room.

Its décor was the exact opposite.

What had appeared to be a fancy black kite, hanging in a corner over an arm-chair, revealed itself, on squinting, to be a shrivel-faced stuffed turkey vulture, wings and head stretched straight and square like a crucifix. On the computer hutch, frozen in mid-shamble, was a little tribe of bug-eyed squirrels, their tiny claws tensed in grotesque, haphazard gesticulations. An empty deer-hoof gun rack sat over the front door; framed newspaper clippings of various wars and armed conflicts shared wall-space with lopsided grouse and a poster of sharp-jawed man with a chainsaw fitted to one arm and a comely woman clinging to one leg, surrounded by ghouls only slightly more disturbing than the stuffed wildlife.

The coat rack by the door, as he glanced back for a second look, had a furry white rump sticking out from under a pile of ball caps and windbreakers. He tentatively raised a jacket that was blinding the dead animal, and looked down at a bony antlered head with staring eyes that had probably once been large shooter marbles. It looked like it had a glandular problem. He put the jacket back.

Pushing aside the Lovecraftian horrors that haunted the room, the scavenged hides stretched on crudely-sculpted bodies in a stilted caricature of life, Jack unplugged the PS2 and DVD player, stacked them in the bag on top of the knives and whiskey, then turned to a nearby bookshelf to parse the DVD collection.

_Legally Blonde._

_Saw 1, 2,_ and _3._

_Calendar Girls._

_Tora! Tora! Tora!_

_A Room With A View._

_Hannibal._

_XXX._

The complete first season of _24_.

The staircase creaked with a cautious, ponderous tread, and Jack pulled his Uzi out of his belt and turned around. "Finally," he muttered.


	4. Banditos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world is full of stupid people.

Kyle shivered, crouching behind the tall grass at the verge of the driveway and staring out at the light-framed shadow of his father and the shotgun.

The gun dropped. "Go home, kid," grunted Ned, exasperated. Kyle stiffened, vulgarities struggling in his throat—his father had found him out, it was all over, they'd be sending him to the lock-up—but no, he realized, he had not been recognized, and the game was still on. He hadn't thought he'd made that bad of a coyote, though. Life was full of petty tricks.

The shadow turned and started heading back to the house. Down the bank, the tanker truck's running lights still glowed red and orange.

He had a job to do, and he needed more time. The remote control in his pocket had to wait.

"Stop," Kyle barked, making his voice thick and rough. _Dangerous,_ he thought. _Think Scarface._ Then he grinned at his own brilliance. "We have your son."

* * *

And back in the house…

"If you done anything to my boy, I swear to God I'll—"

"Boy? What boy? Didn't know old Neddy was leaving issue," said Jack to the matronly architect of the tulip kitchen and the bunny mobile. "Drop the lamp, woman, or I'll shoot."

When Bonny had come down the stairs in her pea-green bathrobe and glanced immediately to the kitchen, hefting an ornate brass table lamp minus the shade over one shoulder like a bat, Jack had cleared his throat firmly, one leg perched on a sofa arm and his hands and gun at ease across his knee, and given her a wolfish grin. Bonny, being a modern sort of woman, had disappointingly neither fainted, nor screamed, nor dropped the lamp, but had advanced on him, and Jack was unnerved to realize that while she clearly had the loss on him if he had to run for it, she out-weighed him by a stone or two and a decent portion of that was muscle. And she was blocking the door.

Leaning against the beer-sticky counter of Jules' Hole outside Vancouver, a good highball of gut-rot in his hand and ringed by lively Canadian wenches, Jack Sparrow would never recall the terror that cracked his face at that realization, but it was well-earned terror. Sea monsters were bad; mothers with blunt objects in living rooms were bad in their own way. And when they were not afraid of guns…

"Where is my husband," she hissed, a violent flush picking out small arteries in her face. She had closed the distance to nearly arm's length, knuckles white around the lamp.

Jack's lip twitched. "Out front looking to shoot me, I expect," he said breezily, vacillating between taking a confident step forward and putting an extra meter or two between his head and the brass lamp. The result was a funny back-and-forth wobble. "Now, my _dear_ woman," and his hands rose and hovered like distracted gulls, ready to swoop in at any moment and shield him from a descending bludgeon, "Tally up what jewels and knickknacks I'm like to find upstairs, if you would, and measure up their value," and he lifted a finger and thumb of one hand side-by-side with the Uzi in the other, "against my merely customary gift of several large holes in your person." His face brightened, with effort, and he waved to the TV. "Watch some C-SPAN! I'll not be a moment."

She stared him down with as reckless and contemptuous eyes as he had ever seen in any young, fit, confident marine out to kill himself a pirate. "Quit yanking my chain."

* * *

"My son's camping at Mount Shasta," scoffed Ned. "Try next week."

Kyle faltered. _What was he_ —he'd told his father he was going to L.A. yesterday. And he hated camping. "That's—that's not where we found him," he growled, trying to get his momentum back. "Picked 'im off the freeway Southbound. Ratty little car, you oughta treat 'im better."

"No son of mine would willingly drive to that wretched hive of booty-lifted Tom Cruise wannabes," Ned replied, with a voice of impossible conviction that told Kyle he had managed to keep his face perfectly straight. "Go burn some doodie-bags in Pleasant Crest."

Time to scare him. "Says his name's Kyle Warner," said Kyle, as though reciting from a list. "Dark hair, no glasses, white Converse sneakers, a bit on the beanpole side. Bright kid—shame to snuff him."

Ned patted down his pockets for a flashlight, and came up empty. "Sorry to rain on your little ransom, but you caught me at a bad time. Is there a phone number I could call you back at?" Now it was his father's turn to falter. Just a hint, but it was there.

"I hate procrastinating," growled Kyle. "Let's do this."

* * *

"I'm _Captain Jack Sparrow,_ " he enunciated to the mother bear. "I've no cause to keep a gat, lacking the means and motivation to use it. I never _bluff_ , and you've my good word it is loaded."

"Gat?" She raised an eyebrow. Of all the things to pay attention to...

"Party-popper," he explained with more slang. "Word's gone stale. Beg pardon—" He started to step around the couch and sidle past her, but she headed him off, thrusting the lamp in his path.

"Quit dickin' around, you Eurotrash mop-head. You shoot something, _now_ , or you _get the hell out of my house._ "

"Now there's no need to get violent—" Jack protested, jerking backward.

"I'm counting!" she snarled. "One. _Two._ You have to three, you pathetic Boy George fanboy, _two-and-a-half!_ "

"Fine! Bloody woman," snapped Jack, and he whirled back to the couch, pressed the Uzi's muzzle pointedly into the back cushion, and pulled the trigger.

 _Click_.

No bang, no brack, no muffled whump of the weapon discharging against a thick pad of cloth and polyester, just _click_. Jammed?

 _Click. Click. Click-click-click-click-click-click._ Most certainly jammed. He glanced from the gun to Bonny and his eyes bulged.

Jack barely had the presence of mind to snatch up his laundry bag before he sprinted for the door, the useless gun flailing at all angles in his hand.

* * *

"Right," said Ned, cautious now, but still cool-headed. "How much are we lookin' at?"

"Forty-three thousand dollars," said Kyle, throwing out the first number that came to mind. "Meet me tomorrow at the Valley Mall parking garage."

"No good, I don't know what you look like," said Ned.

"Leave it under the gray sedan in section P2."

Ned fell silent for a long moment. "If this is your idea of a joke," he said, "I'm going to follow you to your house and Taser you until you can't even say the word 'uncle.' But if you're not one of my boy's stupid friends…I'll get you the money. But the bank won't just hand me forty-three thousand dollars cash— _forty-three thousand?_ "

"It's a number," Kyle grunted. It was annual tuition at San Diego Medical, and it was printed on an awful lot of the mail that had come into their house over the summer. Naturally, it had been the first number to pop into his head.

"Get over into the light, kid," said Ned, hefting the shotgun.

 _Great. Time for plan A, then._ Kyle reached into his pocket and hit the switch on his remote. Across the grass on the airfield, a radial engine kicked into life: Ned's baby, the shark-faced Corsair fighter. Its commanding roar cut through the night, and he could see his father's whole body flinch in fury.

Ned dropped the shotgun and sprinted toward the noise into the dark, as the empty fighter taxied in unguided circles, blundering closer and closer to the other planes with its deadly propeller. "Clarice! _No!_ "

Kyle scowled. He had heard somewhere that if you want to see which of two things a man loves the most, you light them both on fire and see which he runs to put out.

He stood up, shaking, and brushed the grit off his knees, just as a mass of bellowing human and animal ploughed out of the back door of his house.


	5. Gimme Six Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Cause he was lean! Mean! Big and bad, Lord, pointing that gun at me!

Bugger, but that laundry bag was heavy.

Jack kicked the couch, which failed to skitter over the floor and trip the angry woman in front of him but did jam his ankle a bit, and swung his bag at her, which she ducked. Before she could finish ducking, he scrambled past and was half-way to the door when she swung her lamp and snagged the mesh, ripping the bag with its three hundred dollars in electronics, DVDs, whiskey, and cutlery out of his hand and flinging it halfway across the room. Jack stared, aghast, for an instant at her slitted eyes and tooth-bared snarl, then snatched off his hat and shoved it onto her face.

She was so startled by the darkness that she stood there, blindfolded, giving Jack two seconds to grab his bag again and retrieve his hat, and forgot which hand held the lamp when she decided to rearrange that grin. She socked him in the mouth.

Jack staggered, ran for the back door, flung it open so hard it bounced back against the kitchen wall, and leapt at the welcoming blackness beyond, only to scrape his face against the mosquito screen. Bonny was stumping toward him, _fee, fie, foe, fum_ , and he leaned back, not bothering with the latch, and crashed straight through.

It might have been over once Jack got onto open ground, except that he felt another tug on the laundry bag. He tightened his fist on its neck and yanked it after him, dragging, not Bonny, but the taxidermy coat-rack deer, one antler tightly hooked in. The coats on its head flew off, and one painted eye caught the light just so, glowing murky red, before an angry, lamp-swinging shadow blotted it out.

He bolted.

The dead deer bounced over the ground behind him as he ran for the dock and jerked the bag back and forth, trying to shake it free and use the deer to trip his pursuer by turns. Bonny was faster than she looked, like a rhinoceros.

"Get back here, you damn hippie!" she shrieked, as Jack's boots hammered into the dock and he collapsed against the stolen tank truck and swept a kiss over the hood. The deer finally popped off and fell into the water, floating head-down with its hooves stretching up absurdly as it bobbed.

With a backward glance, he squeezed along the dock edge, balancing with a hand on the trunk, and hauled himself on top of the cabin. He stood, adjusted his hat, and glanced down at Bonny, who had stopped at the bumper and was trying to decide how she could negotiate the puny ledge of dock at the side of the truck and chase after him, when she lacked the considerable arm strength needed to climb up. He shrugged his coat into place and waited for his pulse to settle, before squaring his shoulders and striking a stance just above the windshield.

"My dear Brimstone," he began, his bold pose immediately devolving into a flighty, lopsided sway.

"Get down, you goddamn filthy thieving—"

"Mildness is a virtue," he continued, inclining himself indulgently. "Mercy and generosity are blessed, and prudence would keep blackguards like meself from falling back on guff and truculence b'fore helping ourselves to th'loot."

Bonny flung herself at the hood, grabbed onto the antenna, and struggled to lift her feet up onto the front tire.

"Might be time t'concede," he added. "You almost _whacked_ Captain Jack Sparrow, after all. S'not many can boast to that."

Bonny sprawled against the truck, panting, but still with a death grip on the antenna. She blinked and rolled her eyes. " _The_ Jack Sparrow? No kidding."

Sarcastic or not, it wouldn't matter in a few minutes. He watched the house and the riverbank behind her, and swung the bag over his shoulder. "I'm a blast from the past, love. The _Tonga_ 's going back in business."

Something splashed into the water, swimming frantically to the plane's side of the dock, and pulled itself up, tugging the hood of its sweatshirt firmly down over its forehead. "Stow the intake hose!" Jack bellowed at it. "Step to!"

Abruptly, Bonny let go of the truck and charged back into the house. Jack smiled, then winced. "Boy," he yelled at Kyle.

"What?" Kyle snapped from the dock, hands full of heavy oily hose and clothes sopping.

"Might your martial and kooky little household harbor any…bigger, scary guns?"

Kyle frowned. "There's the .50 cal in the basement, but it takes forever to put the chain feed together, and it's a bear to carry—"

"If it's forever, take your time and have a vict'ry cigar," Jack barked. "If it doesn't, you want this ship freed and downstream before darling Mummy blows your brains all over me hull. Move!"


	6. Oh, Canada!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The true North strong and free!

"Almost blew my head off!" Kyle howled over the gut-churning drone of the propellers.

"What?" the Captain bellowed from the cockpit. The bridge was huge for a plane, with a high cylindrical ceiling, a shadowy bank of gauges and dials at the engineer's station, a comfortable desk for the navigator, and at the head of it all, a two-seat cockpit that could fit three fighter cockpits side-by-side. Smitty had reached the pilot's seat before Kyle, and evidently thought his decades-old grease-monkey training qualified him for the takeoff.

"She's blowing holes all over the hull!" shouted Kyle, mounting half-way up the ladder to the bridge. As he spoke, another spray of gunfire rattled the steel.

The Captain shrugged at the damage. "There's other ships at sea."

Kyle frowned, watching Smitty's thin, jeweled hand circle and fan over the lightless instrument panel, then dart straight to the four throttle knobs, one for each engine, that leaned in a row from a little console. He'd thought the _Tonga_ was the man's pet plane, the home and legend that shaped him as a young man, and was now some prize to be hunted for, chased after. He thought he'd had him figured. Apparently not.

The throttle roared, and the ship picked up speed over the river, cleaving the water as it forged into the dark. Something crackled behind them, perhaps more shots, but Kyle heard no more clangs from the metal. His mother couldn't see them anymore, but she was still shooting.

"We're headed toward the bridge," he said, as Smitty, without taking his eyes from the window, hung his antique hat from a small peg behind his head. "You know that, right?"

Smitty ignored him and flapped the ailerons, dragging distant squeals through the plane's frame. _Tonga_ was still hull-deep, dragging in the water, trapped at a taxiing speed.

"You know. The Interstate?"

No response, not so much as a glance in his direction. Kyle crossed the room and fell into the copilot's chair, peering out the bird-spattered windows at the low moon and the river lit by farmhouse lamps.

It had never seemed so narrow.

Kyle replayed what he knew about flying boats in his mind. They were currently running deep in the water, too slow to skid across the surface, and burdened with an enormous amount of drag. Only once their speed lifted them out onto a plane could they begin to work up enough airspeed for takeoff. He fiddled with the stick in front of him and realized that none of the copilot's controls were hooked in, and he had no way to bail out.

"Bank," Kyle muttered, staring over Smitty's shoulder at the river's edge and shadowy tip of the left wing. "Bank. Bank. Bank." He stomped helplessly on his useless rudder pedals. He made a grab for the throttles, to cut power to one side and drag them back to the middle of the river, but Smitty came alive and whacked his hand away with a heavy passel of rings. Kyle cringed back from his glinting black eyes, and the captain casually stomped the rudder around until the plane peeled off the bank, and nosed toward a straight shot for a river of headlights shining in the distance.

"Laddie," said Smitty pleasantly, though a tension in his lip belied annoyance.

"Yeah?" Kyle discretely rubbed his bruised hand.

Smitty gestured at the front window and jerked his head, boring his eyes into his copilot with such fixation that Kyle turned away and watched the river instead, reasoning that someone ought to see where they were going. "You have any clue if this bird can break off 'er step b'fore she and that bridge make like a goose and a Concord's intake?"

The plane gave a heave and tilted to the right, and the roar of the water on its hull changed. They had finally picked up enough speed to rise atop the river's surface, and _Tonga_ had tipped onto her side. They were "on the step," riding on a ledge cut midway along the boat's belly. Smitty leaned in his chair and twisted the ailerons until they leveled, balanced on the fuselage. The bridge ahead seemed to leap at them as they accelerated. Kyle clutched his seat. "No way in hell," he squeaked.

"Lucky you're not flying, then, in'nit?" Smitty, lounging with his pianist hands perched on the stick and the throttle, arrogant as Elvis at the wheel of his Cadillac, seemed oblivious as the bridge grew; they could see a Beetle cross; they could read the banners on the semi-trailers.

Kyle pulled the nylon drawstring out of his sweatshirt hood, wrapped the ends around his hands, and jerked it tight experimentally. It snapped stiff. "Mr. Smith," he began, staggering to his feet.

"Captain."

"Whatever." Kyle slipped behind the captain's chair. He balled up his fists, raising them just above Smitty's range of vision, the length of cord stretched taught between them. "How about I do the flying now?"

Smitty jerked his head around, exasperated. "Absolutely n— _chuchurkhuk!_ "

And Kyle had a pirate's neck wrapped in a drawstring. Smitty flailed, all wrists and elbows, and _Tonga_ flopped to her left side. "Just get out of the chair and let me fly," Kyle grunted, the string digging into his fists as he wrenched with them, and then he froze as his world turned cold. There was a dark steel gun barrel staring him in the eye, and he had just given Smitty every reason to end him as he stood. He released the cord and dropped his hands to his sides.

The Uzi jerked toward the copilot's seat, and Kyle followed it numbly. Smitty corrected the plane's lean, and flicked the drawstring contemptuously to the floor with the nose of his gun. He wore a harsh, tense grin that glittered in the streetlamps.

"Laddie," he snapped at length.

Kyle cringed, and Smitty saw and went on. "I've not been entirely honest with you. If we're to make Riau alive we've a need t'clear these things," and he leaned over and waved back and forth between them with the gun, "between us."

"Mmm," whimpered Kyle.

"I'll start," he said smugly. "My name, as you should've guessed, is not John Smith. It's Sparrow, Jack Sparrow, and it please you t'address me as Cap'n Jack Sparrow, Captain Sparrow, or Captain. And b'fore you ask, I do mean _the_ Captain Jack Sparrow, and there's only ever been one. I've flown this plane longer than any man, woman, or child on this mad world, so I'm to do the takeoff and landing, savvy?"

He glared at Kyle, who nodded hurriedly. "Sparrow" was, he decided, insane.

"Now as for you. You know mutiny is punishable by death?"

"Nnn."

"Then _trust_ me," said Sparrow, jabbing Kyle in the shoulder with the gun, "It's really not smiled on." He glanced out the window as streetlights over the river streaked toward them like avenging angels. "You're lucky the plane's falling apart."

 _Tonga_ rocked back on her step, her nose tilting up of her own accord, and Sparrow winced and leveled her again. Each throttle lay hard down, the engines were howling their guts out, the fuselage just skimming the water as they charged the bridge. Kyle drew his knees into his chest and hugged his arms around them, and Sparrow knit his brow, dribbled his fingers over the stick, and suddenly threw them hard over—banking right, yawing left, elevators up, until the great plane broke free of the water with a lunge, raised one wing, and shot up over a shallow slope of treeless bank, leaving the towering bridge behind and clipping off a streetlight with a boom like a gunshot in a church bell.

Kyle unfolded, panting. Sparrow leaned forward in his seat and watched the roads and houses drop away below them. "Now," he said, flopping back down, "I won't see any more stupidity out of you, will I? Mr. Warner, answer."

"N—no," said Kyle.

"No, what?" Sparrow asked pleasantly.

"No…sir?"

"Fantastic." He hopped to his feet and steadied himself with a bit of windmilling. "Take the helm for a spell."

"What?" demanded Kyle, shocked.

"Sit in this chair," Sparrow enunciated, waving at it, "and use that sticky-wheel there to keep us going in _that_ direction and not into the ground." He patted Kyle on the shoulder. "Step to." Kyle shakily took the pilot's seat and checked the instruments, which on this ancient plane were simpler than on the family Cessna. Sparrow lurched back to the engineer's console and leaned his nose to the massive wall of gauges, checking one by one.

"What do I do?" shouted Kyle.

"Fly," Jack snapped. "I'm not steering us all the way to Vancouver by me lonesome."

Kyle blinked, and set his hands to the stick. The plane responded quickly and gracefully as an ostrich swimming in corn syrup being hit with a rug beater to change direction. He was riding _Tonga Mars_ , leaving the country to seek fortune and adventure with the thieves and pirates of— " _Vancouver?_ "

Jack moved down to a new row of gauges, and found one that was creeping fast and far into the red zone. "Bugger," he snarled, and turned to plummet down the ladder in search of some duct tape and a wrench.

* * *

So it was that Jack Sparrow recovered his plane, picked up an aspiring sawbones for a copilot, and set off to wrangle a crew in some debauched and villainous corner of Vancouver. It was a very long flight.

**Author's Note:**

> The Mars flying boats are completely real, completely humongous, and almost extinct. There's two left, out of an original six (not seven). Those last planes have been converted to waterbombers and have a snappy red-and-white color scheme. A Mars could carry seven Jeeps at once.


End file.
